


Rose Gold

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: F/F, Poetry, Sonnets, Watch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 07:29:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17720795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Khiruev writes sonnets sometimes—classic Kel sonnets, with mirrored lines grouped in lucky/unlucky fours—and then deletes them. This is a translation of one of her discarded files.





	Rose Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



The watch I gave to you keeps perfect time  
as long as you expose its face to light.  
Shut in a box, or buried in the night  
between the stars, it silences its chime  
and interlocking gears grind to a halt.  
The copper's task is smaller. All it does  
is make the watchface seem warm to your eye.  
That reddish gold's a flush as copper tries  
to lace between the atoms of what was  
pure gold once, without either form or fault,  
born in the furnace of a dying star.  
So pressure and destruction give new shape  
to particles which, like me, can't escape  
the spinning force which makes them what they are.


End file.
